what I'm reading (summer 2024)

When it's hot AF you stay inside and read.

I do, anyway.

Here's a partial list of what I've been reading this summer. A lot of nonfiction and memoir, and some memorable fiction.

• Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy Tyson
• This reminded me some of Zellner's Wrong Side of Murder Creek, but Tyson writes about growing up the son of a white minister and the murder of Henry Morrow, a Black man in a small Southern town in 1970. The implications of a white church supporting the grieving Black community are deep and painful. I would have been a toddler; history is not that long ago.
   
• Black AF History by Michael Harriot
• As funny and irreverent of a non-whitewashed history of America as you'd expect from this on-air commentator and journalist. I had the pleasure of seeing him speak at Dillard this summer too. I hope he writes a book focused on the hundreds of revolts and uprisings my religious American history books never covered.
   
• Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett 
• Harriot's book led me to this gem from 1962. Published before the murder of Martin Luther King, it traces African-American history in what we know as the United States from the earliest days. Hard to find but push your local library.
   
• Know My Name by Chanel Miller
• Miller writes beautifully and powerfully about sexual assault, consent, and the failings of institutions and higher ed. I'm amazed at her poise and vulnerability.
   
• The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul
• It's remarkable to me how thoroughly RuPaul Charles has influenced American culture, while somehow dodging the blogs and the culture wars. Ru's memoir is incisive and thoughtful, tracing his early days of making the scene in New York City, shaping and challenging and dropping knowledge bombs. Everybody say love!
   
• Hurdles in the Dark by Elvira Gonzalez
• I enjoyed this memoir even as it frustrated me. A young immigrant woman finds refuge and a future in running and hurdles, but the subtext, the unresolved anxieties of her undocumented family and years of sexual abuse at the hands of a coach, left me wondering and worrying. I hope she is safe and sound.
   
• Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
• I loved Such a Fun Age and this is a stellar follow up. Reid deftly and accurately captures the moods, voices and vices of college students and a professor at the University of Arkansas. You can see the crisis building and you just can't look away. The dialogue is accurate and devastating.
   
• The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
• A layered family story, again with looming crises and hilarious, heart-rendingly bad decisions. The characters are well developed and with the exception of some vernacular dialogue I skipped over, this kept me raptly reading all the way through.
   

video adjacent

Not that anyone's clamoring but I haven't made a video in quite awhile. 

Five years, actually! (Not counting ditch-jumping vids.)

I'd calculated how much time I was spending crafting videos (hours and hours at a stretch) vs writing (less and less). Then, pandemic times. I was taking photos not videos. I forgot about giphy. Who cared, really when Bigger Things Were Happening?

But, recently I've been tinkering with a collaborator. Taking and uploading phone vids. Remembering how fun it is to layer in sounds and transitions and special effects, to speed things up or chop 'em up or slow them down, just to see what happens.

I'm so controlled in so much of my life, but playing is fun.

the wisdom of RuPaul (living your power)

 

@rupaulofficial

Are you ready to live in your power?

♬ original sound - RuPaul

so...this is happening

 

lmnl

when a tipsy stranger hands over her phone and credit card

It was a night the other night.

Walked in the drenching 6pm heat to watch silky smooth Stephen Walker 'Nem. Kid Chocolate played a crisp, sparkling trumpet, a friend sat in on jazz piano. We took a table by the floor-to-ceiling window, close enough to catch cool air, but still on the sidewalk to enjoy the passing scene: a local or two, clumps of women, bro's striding by. A musician in a hand-painted PT Cruiser, showing off his matching red pants and shoes and a brand new pair of silver-studded loafers. Come to my show Sunday at BMC, he urged, before heading home with his wife. 

As we got up to but our table and go get food, a drunk woman stumbled up. You're from here, right? I need to get to the Marigny Opera House. Another woman and I pointed out she could walk there in ten minutes. I've had too many cocktails, she insisted. Help me figure out Lyft. It keeps telling me to verify my email. She handed me her phone and credit card. 

Unwillingly I started punching in numbers. Fail. Tried again. Fail. I'm going to be late! the woman wailed. It's New Orleans, I bluffed. They'll let you in. Tried her credit card once more. Finally. I accepted the to and from, showed her "driver's details will display in 1 minute" and handed back her phone. She grinned, an unlit joint dangling out of her mouth, and drifted around the corner. We departed, hopeful she'd make it, too hungry to hang around.